Facing tough competition from a red-hot console market, developers are looking online in a bid to keep computer-based gaming alive.
There was a time when personal computers were the tools of choice for hard-core gamers. But four years ago, on the brink of the release of the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360, analysts were proclaiming the death of PC gaming.
These new consoles – well, Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox – were more powerful than the computers at the time, and were integrating with home entertainment systems to provide high definition experiences beyond just gaming. Nintendo, meanwhile, offered a completely new approach to gaming with its Wiimote controllers.
And this year, Electronic Arts decided to kill the PC versions of many of its popular sports titles, including Madden NFL 09, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and NBA Live. LucasArts is releasing The Force Unleashed, its new Star Wars title, on every platform except PC.
Months ago TechRadar released a list of 10 tricks that Sony hasn’t revealed to no one. Well guess what, that’s not all! There are now 16 PS3 tricks that Sony hasn’t mentioned to anyone. Are there still more secrets that Sony is trying to hide from us. We will find out soon...
(1) Play games from any country Harbouring a desire to play Super Gaiden Ninja XI? Now you can. In fact, you can handily play any PS3 game from any country. On holiday in the States and spot the latest release at a bargain dollar-to-pound price? Help yourself. So far, at least, PS3 games aren’t being region coded. That said PS2 and PS1 games are so you can’t play a US title on a Euro console.
And let’s not forget that Blu-ray movies are region-coded so the barriers aren’t completely down yet.
(2) The secret video reset One of the most annoying as... More »
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and other platforms is LucasArts' most ambitious gaming project to-date. Taking over four years from concept to completion and enduring multiple delays, the long-awaited game is the first next-gen development effort by the small studio, and the first to utilize multiple new technologies and the direct input of Industrial Light and Magic.
Taking all this into consideration it comes as a bit of a surprise to see what print media is saying about the game. With four reviews in the can, Force Unleashed has only mustered a meta score of 6.8, with individual publication scores ranging from a mediocre 7.5 all the way down to a pathetic 56.
Official Xbox Magazine offers the highest score of 7.5 and has the following to offer.
With its non-branching storyline and no multiplayer, Force Unleashed ... More »
We apologize to everyone for the inconvenience of the SOCOM: Confrontation Public BETA delay. However, I am happy to say that everything has now been worked out and the SOCOM: Confrontation Public BETA will go live in North America tomorrow for anyone who has preordered at GameStop/EB GAMES.
You must be registered for the SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta using the instructions provided on the GameStop/EB GAMES SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta voucher to get your SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta code.
Assuming you've already registered, here is what to expect. At around 10am Pacific Daylight Time, e-mails containing the SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta PSN codes will start going out in bursts. The e-mails will start arriving at e-mail in-boxes throughout the day.
The e-mail will be sent to the PSN login e-mail address you provided when you registered for the SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta. To redeem the SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta PS... More »
A funny thing happened a couple of months ago. After completing the PSP version of God of War, developer Ready At Dawn Studios posted a matter-of-fact news story on their site about how they were packing up their dev kits and sending them back to Sony.
The company behind one of the must-play games on the PSP was giving up on the system completely. Around the same time, Sony itself announced a new partnership program where universities could buy up PSP and PS2 development kits on the cheap. It would seem that Ready At Dawn isn’t the only studio giving up on the system.
Presumably, there is an assembly line at Sony headquarters where the old dev kits are repackaged for uni students. Maybe they throw in some typical student freebie favourites in the box, like free condoms, and booklets about doing drugs responsibly.
At any rate, this phase-out is already being felt at retail. There are fewer and fewe... More »
Capping off three days of gaming, competing, creating and record breaking was the final keynote address given by NVIDIA Senior VP of Marketing, Daniel Vivoli. It was the culmination of all of the major events of the convention–results for the Guinness World Record, ESWC, the Demoscene and NVScene challenges–as well as the winners of best visual application and emerging companies. But what really stole the show: the Mythbusters blowout demo.
Congratulating the daunting task of completing a new Guinness World Record was the first highlight of the show. A total of 203 gamers played for 36-hours straight against each other–no small feat indeed. For their efforts, those that completed were awarded with customized plaques commemorating their achievement, gift certificates, a refund on their registration fee and sweet, custom NVIDIA-themed shoes by Nike.
Armed Assault 1, which will be reinforced by the second part of the series in Q1 2009, looks quite amazing with some community based overhauling.
3DC user Jay.Gee, who caught some attention with several incredible game screenshots, used community content and in-game sequences to create some amazing pictures of Armed Assault 1.
More awesome screenshots can be seen at the link at the top of this news article.
When any totally new gaming platform reaches developers for the first time they are at the bottom of a learning curve. Not only that, they are usually in a big hurry to get a game out as soon as possible after the platform launches. So early games on a new platform are usually little better than the best games on the previous generation platform.
As time passes the developer climbs up the learning curve. How fast this happens depends a lot on the complexity of the platform’s architecture and the availability of good engines, tools and libraries. The Microsoft Xbox 360 has a relatively straightforward system architecture and has had very good development tools from very early in the availability of dev kits.
So we would expect developers to be getting close to optimum performance out of it fairly quickly. And this has been borne out by it delivering superior performance in virtually every cross platform game so far. But has the top of the learning curve been... More »
It’s official! LittleBigPlanet is not the casual interactive friendly game we all thought it would be. Of course those levels will exist, but we have confirmation of a new level that will turn your fun happy go lucky adventure into a survival of the fittest match making you care less about what your friends are doing.
The video below shows off a level known as Skulldozer, and just by reading the title you can imagine what kind of havoc Sackboy has got himself into. This level is dark, gloomy and worst of all this trailing LittleBigPlanet boss wants you DEAD! Take a look at what you could be getting yourself into this October 21st.
Check out the video below courtesy of mysterymann via GameTrailers. Enjoy!
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